The boy’s steady, hollow drumbeat bounced off the high stone walls of the City before him. The 8-year-old’s short blond hair blew in the soft breeze, his wide blue eyes staring straight ahead into the lowered gate of Sundabar. The eyes were fixed with a gaze of steel, but whether or not they were actually seeing anything in front of the boy, that was questionable.

His normally cherub-like face was flat and unemotional. He wore a dirty smock and was barefoot, the only item the pale young boy had was a wide shallow drum made of bone and covered in runes. The boy used another rune-covered leg-bone as a drumstick, producing a loud low booming every 1/2 second or so, almost in perfect rhythm with the boy’s footsteps.

Moving like a zombie, the boy walked right between the outer guards and into the city. Somehow realizing he had entered the city, the boy came out of his daze and stopped his drumming. The drum and the bone suddenly morphed into two small cymbals attached to the boy’s left thumb and forefinger. The young boy looked at his fingers in amazement, as if he was not expecting his drum to do that.

The inner gate guards nearly dropped their spears when the boy suddenly came into their view out of nowhere. They had not noticed him until then, and the outer guards had not seen him at all.

One of the guards recognized the boy from the Troupe of Gypsy Minstrels that had just passed through town. They had put on a pretty good show their 1st few nights, and the guard had caught the performance the 4th night. His wife had remarked how cute the little drummer boy was. And now here was the same boy, alone, dirty and seemingly lost.
“Hello there, little fellow,” the guard said in the strange tone people often use when addressing children. “Did you lose your Troupe?”

As soon as the guard said this, the boy’s mind was assaulted with horrible visions. Slaughter, killing, fires, raping, he saw his father’s head cut off. Then he was his father, getting his own head chopped off. He saw his mother being raped before his eyes, then suddenly he was his mother, and he felt every bit of horror and pain she did. There were others, so many others. He saw them all die, and he also experienced all their deaths.

The boy falls to his knees on the cobblestones of the city street. He begins to idly tap the two bony cymbals together in a quick rhythm.
“They..they are gone.” He looked into the Guard’s eyes, “Dead….Or wait…no, they are not dead, and they are not gone.” The boy says, confusing the guard.
“What are you saying lad?”
“They, all of them, they were killed, soldiers, killed,” the boy struggled to explain, “but they are all still here, RIGHT HERE!” he shouts at the guard, pointing to his head, tears well up in the boy's large blue eyes.
The guard finally understands that someone must have killed the troupe and left the boy behind for some reason.
“Poor thing, must be in shock,” the Guard thinks. He walks over to the boy and gently grabs his shoulders and stands him up.
“That is horrible, lad. But you are right, as long as you remember them they will always be alive. Come, my name is Ro’Hatch, I will take you to my wife, she will be pleased to feed you, you are nothing but skin and bones, and she loves to fatten people up, as you can see.” The man juts his pot-belly out, trying to lighten the mood.

The boy had no way to convey to the man what he truly meant. But he nodded and followed the man home. Somehow tapping the cymbals together made the images go away, but the ghostly memories were always there. All of them painful and horrifying.
All but one memory…

His grandfather had come to him as the slaughter began. He handed the boy a set of oddly disfigured drums made of rune-covered bones.
“Play my son, play this drum until you can no more!” the old man then left, the boy never saw his grandfather’s face again. But he did meet him again minutes later as he relived the old man’s death from a sword through the heart. Part of the old-man was absorbed into his grandson, and he was not the only one. That night, as each troupe member died, the boy absorbed a little part of them. In this way he gained some of their knowledge, but all of their pain.

This went on for hours, but the boy played the drums continuously for the better part of the next day. No soldier had touched him, or even noticed him even, though his drumbeats must be easily carrying far out into the forest
Playing until his hands were swollen and purple, the little drummer boy finally stopped his song, The soldiers had long since moved off, leaving only broken bodies and burned ashes. Not knowing what else to do the boy headed back along the wagon trail, opposite the direction the soldiers went. Another day and he had returned to the walls of Sundabar.